wmlro.com: Morgenthau may be out, but he's not down
Robert Morgenthau, who has appeared in these pages more often than any other prosecutor, indeed, more than any other lawyer, retired on 31 January 2009. That didn't last long: the 90 year old robot has joined private practice.
As a consultant (in the USA, they call them "of counsel") to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz, a small-firm by Wall Street standards with just over 200 lawyers, he will be called on for special expertise. He is unlikely to be involved in the day-to-day running of a case.
But it's probable he will be attached to litigation. In an uncharacteristically vague statement he has said that he hopes to "help businesses succeed and take on workers."
He did mention something about a time of "high unemployment" - but for man who has lived for the cut and thrust of litigation, and thrived on it to the point where he's bored with retirement after just three weeks despite having already worked a quarter of a century longer than most of his contemporaries, somehow one cannot picture him sitting at a table negotiating contracts unless the stakes are high and someone, somewhere, is going to get a kicking.
Wachtell is firm that this is not a revolving door deal: it has no cases where the Manhattan DA's office is involved.